Side Hustles — Why You Fail Where Others Succeed
Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a doe-eyed neophyte, everyone wants some extra cash, and that’s where side hustles come along. While that cheesy extra income and early retirement is surely elusive, many of us don’t really think through and through executing our little businesses.
While I’m more of a doe-eyed neophyte and have a long, long life ahead of me, I’ve gotten my hands dirty a lot of times, may it be dipping into SaaS, or affiliate marketing, or even good old freelancing. Most of the times I failed, and a few times I learned.
Here, I’ve compiled a rundown of blunders many newcomers tend to make in their budding side hustles — missteps that often pave the way for their way to failure.
1. Your Idea Isn’t Profitable
A few years back a bunch of undergraduates approached me with the idea of launching a startup. They had no technical knowledge (which is why they approached me in the first place) and their takes on starting a venture were wild.
This applies to all kinds of side hustles. This group in particular, thought that earnings through ads displayed on their product would be enough. None of them had a real idea of how a sustainable business might work. Sometimes people just need a reality check, which is what they got soon enough. I hope they’re doing well now after so many years.
Although that venture failed terribly, it taught me that sometimes it’s better to let go of ideas before they start to affect your pocket, or worse, trap you in a recurring pattern of low returns for high input.
2. You Lack Skills
Most hustlers just get all motivated and ready to break free from the matrix only to find themselves lacking in real world experience and skills. Often accompanied with overconfidence and their white belt fury, they make the most dangerous mistake: doing before learning. This could be compared to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The first step to anything, not just a side hustle, should be gathering enough knowledge and testing it. It’s crucial to outgrow the beginner fever, and think through. Which brings us to the next mistake.
3. You Don’t Plan
This has personally been my biggest fallacy in following my passion projects. Planning is crucial to success, and again that applies to more than just side hustles. But it’s definitely something most people don’t do. Or they start out planning everything, but then stop. Embarking on a side hustle with no plan in mind is akin to running around a forest with no sense of direction — in the best case you’re simply lost, in the worst case you end up badly bruised. So don’t bruise up your free time and wallet due to a planning fallacy.
4. You Don’t Have Free Time
The ideal side hustle is self-sustainable. But even so, a lasting fire needs good kindling. In the initial stage of any side hustle you need to have free time, or sacrifice your leisure time. Not having enough time actually killed one of my pretty smoothly running “hustles” which was just an automated YouTube channel on which I tried affiliate marketing. But eventually the low profits just weren’t worth the time and efforts I was putting in, specially since I’m a student. If I had a few months of free time, maybe it would have taken off. But the point is it didn’t.
5. You Diversify Too Much
May it be wealth or time, people often make the mistake of diversifying it. While people with a lot of money to start with can diversify their wealth into different ventures, most people reading this probably don’t want to risk that kind of money, specially in a side hustle.
Diversification of time on the other hand is something you never want to do. Just pick a good hustle, work on it through and through, and go for the next if it doesn’t work. You can’t ride two horses, unless you’re Chuck Norris or something.
Albeit, diversifying isn’t always bad, specially for low input hustles that have a low chance of taking off. It all ties down to how much time you have then.
6. You Focus On The Money
Now, there’s nothing wrong with focusing on the money at all. But focusing on money alone, in a side hustle specifically, is tiresome. It’s already a side hustle, if it doesn’t align with your skill-set and interests, then it’s as good as a chore you do apart from your actual work, that pays you in misery. Redirecting your focus on gaining the right insights and skills in the beginning is definitely much more helpful later to focus on the profits.
7. You Give Up
All that said, something people don’t hear enough is it’s okay to fail. That’s how you learn. So don’t be too hard on yourself.
What’s wrong is giving up. To conclude this article I’d just say this to my fellow side hustles (way to sound cheesy): Opportunities will come and go, but you are forever in the moment. So don’t give up, keep grinding!